


beyond a mirage lies the enemy

by Tiara_of_Sapphires



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Relationship, tros speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 16:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiara_of_Sapphires/pseuds/Tiara_of_Sapphires
Summary: The final battle approaches, but things don’t go as planned.





	beyond a mirage lies the enemy

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, idk what to say about this.  
Unbeta-ed, so all mistakes are my own!  
Enjoy!

When they walked into the ruins of the Second Death Star, Kylo Ren could only hope that they weren’t going to die in their quest to finally end this war.

The bond was still shuttered, but he could still sense Rey’s anticipation as she followed close behind him. He could take some comfort in her presence.

It only took a coup by the Knights of Ren and the fragmentation of the First Order for the fog to be lifted over Kylo’s eyes.

He had been a fool, as his family before him, unable to see the threat that was in front of his face.

Palpatine, Darth Sidious, the orchestrator of the Jedi Purge, leader of the Empire, puppetmaster of the First Order, murderer and liar. Vader hadn’t killed him decades ago, only scattered him so thin that it took years for him to assume any semblance of power again.

Kylo’s very blood sang for vengeance, to burn down the husk of a man until not even the ashes could create a new being again.

Rey had almost killed him the moment he appeared at their makeshift camp, only to crumple in relief when he told her what he knew, what he now understood.

She put her body between him and the Resistance, who had less qualms about killing him than she did. It took a little more convincing and plenty of Rey swearing up and down on her life that he wasn’t going to trick them, but a tentative alliance was formed.

Now, maybe, he could leave it all behind once Palpatine was well and truly dead.

The coordinates took them to a planet near Endor, the bulk of the superlaser resting in a roaring sea. The Resistance stayed guard from where they entered, ready for any signal to attack. For all they knew, a legion of Palpatine’s troops were inside.

Now, they were here, the culmination of something decades in the making, and Kylo wasn’t sure how to feel.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

It was a dumb and rhetorical question, but he couldn't help himself in asking. Rey glanced at him and shrugged.

“A little. We have everything to lose here.”

The only two known Force-sensitives other than Palpatine in the whole galaxy. If they died, there would be no stopping Palpatine from stretching his influence to return his armies to Imperial might.

“We aren’t going to lose,” he breathed.

He could allow himself to feign cockiness. It was more Han’s forte, but he was his father’s son, whether he liked it or not.

He stiffened as Rey grabbed his hand, feeling his ears heat up.

“We aren’t going to lose,” she repeated, squeezing his hand with a smile when he glanced back at her.

For a moment, they stood there, hand in hand, before Rey seemed to remember herself. Kylo immediately missed the contact when she dropped his hand, shuffling in place.

“Shall we?” Rey mumbled.

“Of course.”

The must and murk of a submerged, near abandoned wreckage hit them as soon as the door slid open.

“You know, I’ve scavenged places like this before,” Rey murmured.

“I know.”

The Dark Side was strong in that place. It wasn’t a natural wellspring of the Force, but Palpatine had imbibed it with his power that it reminded Kylo of the forests of Dagobah.

“Stay close,” he said.

She quipped back almost immediately. “I was about to say the same thing.”

There were a few flickering lights along the hallway, just enough to keep them from charging in blind.

The hall inhaled around them and instantly they were back-to-back, sabers in hand.

The lights brightened and then plunged them into darkness. The ground tilted and jolted, sending them both to the ground.

Kylo recovered first, bracing himself on his knees and activating his lightsaber with a loud hiss, red light spilling hot through the darkness. The lights flickered on and the hall was silent and still once again.

“Are you okay?” Kylo asked, turning back to Rey.

Rey dusted herself off, clearly blinking out the dust that flew into her eyes.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

The light from his saber glinted strangely off her eyes before he deactivated it.

They continued on, shaking off the impact. It was a rickety structure and neither of them knew what state of decay it was in. They couldn't expect each step to be steady under their feet.

They stopped where two hallways intersected, leaving broad swaths of echoing darkness at their left and right as well as in front of them.

Kylo inhaled loudly through his nose. “We are getting close.”

“How can you tell?”

He stopped and closed his eyes. Everything was muddied here, but he could sense an ancient darkness, a pestilence that lingered for decades.

Palpatine twisted Anakin into an evil shadow and started the chain of events that caused endless suffering for Kylo's family. His death would end it.

“He’s down this hallway,” he murmured, pointing his hand forward. “I can sense it.”

“It’s hard to make sense of anything down here. What a miserable place to be.”

He opened his eyes and turned to Rey. She stared down the hallway where he had indicated, head tilted to the side. She was in deep concentration, her brow tight in thought.

They were going to do it. He couldn't allow himself to become afraid.

“We’ll win. I know it.”

He could allow that conviction to carry him. That, and her presence. She always was so beautiful, even when, _especially_ when, she was upset with him.

Rey turned to see him staring and stared back, a smirk pulling at her lip.

Kylo didn't know what more he could do. They were going in for the fight that could end the war or end their lives.

He closed the small space between them, taking her face in his hands. She was so small compared to him, but strong and capable.

His equal, in all things.

She watched him demurely, lacking the shock he would have expected. Perhaps she wanted it too and was just waiting for him to make a move.

He ducked down and kissed her, inhaling her scent. She was soft and intoxicating, pressing back just a little. To think, once this was over, he could kiss her again. He pulled back, still cradling her face in his hands, breathing against her lips.

“Thank you,” Rey said.

He didn't have time to ask what she meant. Pain bloomed white-hot in his abdomen and his ears filled with Rey’s screams.

The Rey in front of him smirked and deactivated the lightsaber, red, Sith red, she ignited into his gut. Before his rapidly-tinting vision, her face turned sunken and pale, yellow eyes and cracked teeth.

“I see now the blood of Skywalker is too weak for my purposes," the wraith growled. 

Rey, the real Rey, rushed forward with a howl. She slashed her saberstaff through visage, chasing it away.

Kylo’s legs crumpled under him, crashing into Rey who couldn't keep them upright for even a moment. They collapsed to the ground and Kylo rested his head against her chest for a moment, listening for her heartbeat over the roaring in his ears.

A short-lived sound, as Rey flipped him onto his back.

“Kylo? Ben?” Rey said, desperately patting over his chest, as if that would stop the wound from killing him. Her expression was marred by tears and anger.

He didn't like that very much, but there was little he could do to change that.

“Ben,” he whispered back.

Rey choked at the sound and her mouth turned up into a sad smile.

“We’re going to get you out. We’re going to fix this.”

He shook his head. He was dying. Surely, he had to be dying and he couldn't let Rey have false hope like that. “No. This is your fight now.”

Rey sniffed, tears dripping down her face. He never got used to seeing her cry, even though it was often his fault that she would cry in the first place.

They were a lonely and sad pair.

“It’s the will of the Force,” she croaked. “You’re alive. He could’ve killed you instantly but he couldn’t.”

The logic of it was lost on him. There was only the dull pain that permeated his whole body. The damaged nerves sent pain with every heartbeat.

He lifted up his hand, the motion straining on his wound and turning his vision black for a moment. He managed to reach her chin, just barely stroking over when she ducked down to press her cheek against his palm. Warmth and the tack of tears leeched onto his skin, painfully hot as his limbs became cold. She turned her head into his palm, pressing a kiss there.

“I’m not going to let you go that easily,” she whispered.

He didn't have the strength to nod, his vision leaving him. “I know.”

Beyond the rush in his ears and the Force, Light and Dark, ebbing and flowing through them and around them, he could hear Rey calling out his name before he knew nothing more.

* * *

* * *

Rey screamed herself hoarse calling for help, summoning all her strength in keeping his life inside his body as she dragged him back from where they came.

He couldn't die. She wouldn’t allow it.

Finn sprinted in ahead of the rest of the Resistance to find Rey cradling Ben close to her, both bodies ashen, both still alive.

“Help him,” she begged, her voice a faint and choking plea. “Help him.”

The rest came as a blur. Finn grabbed her around her waist and hauled her to her feet as the Resistance medics closed over him, taking him on a stretcher and away.

Finn dragged Rey behind them. She could barely walk, could barely see or hear or breathe.

Palpatine, though his blade felled Ben, crippled her in the same breath.

She had been separated from him after being knocked to the ground, left running blindly through the wreckage. When she had seen him and the doppelganger at the end of the passage, she sprinted with her saberstaff activated, screaming his name. He didn't hear her until it was too late.

Palpatine and all his power had her from sensing him and tricked him so perfectly. She just had been too weak to break free from it until it was too late.

Rey felt tears burning in her eyes. She could distantly hear Finn shouting, “We’ll be back another time. We need to get out of here, now.”

She could agree with that, glad that Finn could seamlessly take over as mission leader. Her mind still lingered on that faded light being tended to by the medics. She didn't want to leave him, but she didn't want to look at him.

“Rey?”

Rose shook her shoulder, getting her attention. Rey stared at her, blinking uncomprehendingly.

The other woman regarded her with a gentle smile. “You should rest.”

“What if something happens when I’m sleeping?” she mumbled as Rose helped her to her side.

“We’ll wake you up. Now, rest, okay?”

Sleep took her like a wave.

* * *

She awoke with a jolt on a worn cot, back in the Resistance camp.

For a moment, she thought it had been a dream, but the echoing emptiness on the other side of the bond, occupied by a faint spark, reminded her of what had happened.

“Ben?” she rasped.

She scrambled for a canteen and swallowed a few mouthfuls of water. She could sense him, still faint, but still there.

With shaking steps, she stumbled through the dawn air to the makeshift med bay, almost collapsing when she saw him.

His body floated in a bacta tank and her eyes were immediately drawn to the red and black splotch as big as her outstretched hand on his abdomen.

Rey took a few steps forward to lean her head against the glass.

The medical droid creaked in the corner it sat in, startling her. “We had to replace his organs with synthetics,” it reported.

Rey took her eyes away from Ben's face—unfortunately covered up by that mask over his mouth—to stare blankly at the rusted droid.

“How could you do that so quickly? It’s only been a few hours.”

The medical droid peered back at her, its bright eye sockets giving nothing away. “You have been asleep for two days, Master Jedi.”

She winced. No wonder she felt so hollowed-out. It was reason to celebrate, regardless. Ben had survived the first 2 days. He just needed to survive the rest of the healing process.

“How long will he be in there?” she asked.

“By my calculations, at least 3 more days. He almost died.”

Rey nodded to the droid, dismissing it quietly. Turning back to the glass, her eyes wandered over his face.

One particular detail finally filtered through the haze. He had kissed her doppelganger. She didn't appreciate that idea at the time. Fear had muddled everything, even the tiny part of her that howled in victory and jealousy that he wanted to kiss her but wasn’t kissing _her_.

She could wait for him and they could talk about what happened. Rey thought about him since Starkiller, wanting to kiss him since Ahch-To.

She knew all about waiting.

* * *

Consciousness returned too quickly for Kylo’s tastes, but he felt so numb and floaty that he might as well have been still asleep.

He opened his eyes and found slight resistance. Bacta, of course, bacta and so much sleep that his eyes welded themselves shut.

Dim natural light came in first as did knowledge that he was in as safe a place as one could be in this galaxy.

Rey had been right, he supposed. Han liked to quip about how women were always right in one way or another. That was one of the childhood memories Kylo allowed himself to cling to of his father.

Next, he searched for the one person he needed to see the most. He didn't have to search far, as he turned his head, wincing at his stiff neck, to see her.

Rey slumped over at his bedside, sound asleep, cradling his hand in hers. She looked gaunt and tired, more so than usual. What had happened in the wreckage had drained her as much as it drained him. She didn't deserve it, but there was nothing he could’ve done to stop it.

Her chest rose and fell in gentle movements and he wished he could remain in this little moment forever. He wished he could fall back asleep and they could sleep the war and existence away.

Palpatine was still alive and they had work to do.

When Kylo finally shook her awake, her eyes met his.

Teary-eyed relief and cold determination passed between them, not needing the bond to convey as much.

They knew what they had to do.

**Author's Note:**

> So, in the process of brainstorming this thing, I got a worse and better idea, so look out for that.  
Any and all feedback is appreciated!  
Also, look out for Reylo Fanfiction Anthology, posting October 1, 2019!!  
Cheers!


End file.
